Housing in the Emerging Paradigm

La Borda

Contributing to housing as a right, holon is supporting the collective efforts to design the shared living of La Borda coop, one of the pioneering urban co-housing initiatives in southern Europe.

Access to housing is one of the most pressing social issues of today’s cities, being housing speculation one of the drivers of 2008’s financial crisis in many countries. In particular to the city of Barcelona, around 20 housing evictions were performed every day in 2013 to people unable to pay their mortgages, in a city where the income family spends in housing related costs it can reach to 80% more the majority. Not just house prices but rent has skyrocketed, 27% in the 2013-2017 period. Furthermore, when the majority of world population lives in cities, innovation in the housing system holds a growing capacity to switch current environmental impacts resulting from existing housing options and it’s impact on lifestyles.

In Can Batlló, one of Barcelona citizens’ success stories of how strong social fabric can transform positively city neighbourhoods, la borda is a co-housing cooperative evolving since 2012, stablished as a coop since September 2014. With strong focus in social inclusion and environmental responsibility, the community project is pioneering a new wave of initiatives weaving with Barcelona’s city housing efforts.

We are contributing with our design culture since 2014 to empower and facilitate the collective efforts to shape the services of the future shared co-housing. We have been doing design research to understand user’s worldviews, current and future everyday practices, and how this all might take shape in a conviviality space such as this one. We’re currently co-designing services such as a shared laundry, object library, common kitchen, guest houses or the digital layer of it all. Finally, for the last leg of the project, residents are expected to get in by Sept 2018, the project has been awarded funding by Barcelona City council to make open access the learnings and service examples of the project with a guide on community led cohousing services.